


Drink in Her Hand

by sarken



Category: Third Watch
Genre: Episode: More Monsters, Gen, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-10
Updated: 2005-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-05 18:11:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarken/pseuds/sarken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faith has seventy-two hours to deal with the events of "More Monsters."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drink in Her Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Set during "Alone Again, Naturally."

Once reality sets in, she leaves the hospital and walks to the nearest liquor store. The man behind the counter eyes her as she wanders up and down the aisles, unsteady on her high-heeled boots. She chooses a bottle of bourbon (Bosco tells her it's perfect for this, perfect like little razor blades scraping away at the bile in the back of your throat) and she has to count nickels and dimes to pay for it.

She clutches the paper bag in both hands and no one on the subway wants to sit next to the bloodstained, wild-eyed woman. Tonight the train's orange seats hurt like plastic chairs in ICU, and home feels further away than ever.

She stumbles into the elevator and leans against the wall. The numbers blur and her hand shakes as she tries to press the button for her floor, but the bottle remains unopened. This is what follows shock and precedes grief. It's usually what happens after too much scotch, when she's feeling too good to go home, when she goes back to Bosco's and they have another drink.

Grief hits the moment the whiskey reaches her stomach. (She never feels the razor blades he promised her.) She sobs until her chest burns and makes her remember what it felt like to breathe for him when she couldn't remember to breathe for herself. Her heart falls to her stomach again, swimming in the whiskey. She wants it to drown there.

The smell of dried blood rising from her clothes makes her next drink taste like CPR on the hospital floor. His blood was in her mouth, all hot, sticky, and thick like a metallic syrup. She cries while she throws up; she cries while she kneels on the bathroom floor, its tiles hospital cold.

Mint toothpaste covers the sick taste in her mouth, but it doesn't cover the remembered taste of blood. With shaking hands, she pours another glass of bourbon and sets it on her nightstand.

She wakes up naked and on top of the blankets, the empty glass shattered on the dry floor. Her head spins when she sits up, and she cuts her foot on the glass shards. It bleeds. She vomits and she cries, and then she steps into the shower because she's already undressed.

Blood mixes with water, turning it the color of weak Kool-Aid. The tile wall is cold despite the steam, and Faith leans against it and cries until the water clears. She thinks she should have been the one to dive in and unlock Mann's handcuffs. The chlorine could have washed Bosco's blood from her clothes.

She puts on her robe without drying off. She takes the box of tissues with her when she goes to sit on the couch, but the sobs never come, never squeeze the air from her still-burning lungs. In her mouth, the taste of bile hides the taste of blood; she tries to cover it with booze. She doesn't turn on a light or cook a meal that day.

The next day, her back aches from sleeping on the couch and her head throbs from drinking on an empty stomach. She takes a hot shower, towels dry, dresses in jeans, and brushes her teeth. She dry swallows two red and white caplets from the medicine cabinet and leaves the bathroom.

In the bedroom, she folds the black suit sitting at the foot of the bed. The pants are free of bloodstains, but she wants all of the reminders gone. (She would throw out the shoes if they hadn't cost her seventy dollars.) She stuffs her bloodied clothes into a black garbage bag and carries it to the trash room. The smell of garbage and air sanitizer chokes her, makes her breathe through her mouth, but she stays and listens as the bag falls down the chute and lands on something glass.

She sits with Bosco at the hospital and doesn't stop at a liquor store on the way to the subway station. On the train, a sour-smelling drunk sits next to her and when she makes it home, she dumps half a bottle of expensive bourbon down the kitchen sink. She runs the water for good measure before sweeping the glass off her bedroom floor and into a dustpan. She pours the shards into a bag with the empty whiskey bottle. It shatters at the bottom of the trash chute, but Faith isn't there to hear it. She has to get some sleep. She goes back to work in the morning.

:end:


End file.
